of debate on the fiscal cliff. the house should have passed a bill saying you cannot use money for medicare to finance obamacare. the plan to finance obamacare and the house should have passed a bill on that. or how about passing a bill that any reform of entitlements -- medicare and social security -- cannot involve taking away benefits from those on the system today and those about to go on the system. you can make good reforms to young people. they should have passed a tax simplification bill. host: next call comes from john in pennsylvania, republican line. caller: good morning. president eisenhower, the rate for the top taxpayers never went below 91%. now we cannot seem to get it up to 39%. in 2001, we had the largest budget surplus ever. 10 years later it would have the largest deficit ever. in 2001, we had $5 trillion in debt. we gained $10 trillion in debt in less than 10 years. $5 trillion was because of the bush tax cuts. guest: there were numerous tax shelters back then that were finally removed from the